PRE-FENTANYL –
Feb. 19, 2021 – Christiane Felscherinow’s lengthy taped interviews with two journalists formed the backbone of the book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo, which was published in 1978 and made into a film directed by Uli Edel in 1981. An eight-part series with the same title launches in German on Amazon Prime on Friday evening.
Edel’s original grim and gritty low-budget film, which used mostly first-time actors and had a soundtrack by David Bowie, shocked critics and audiences with its decrepit depictions of a lost generation of Berlin youth who turned to heroin. The leftwing newspaper Die Tageszeitung insisted it was impossible for the remake to have such a cultural, social and political impact as its forerunner. “This new series will never be able to leave its mark like the 1981 film did”. “Is it really necessary to give a new language to 40-year-old iconic material which influenced a whole generation and to place it in the here and now?”